"IF YOU DO NOT WANT IGA TO COLLECT, USE, STORE OR TRANSMIT THE DATA DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, DO NOT INSTALL OR PLAY THE SOFTWARE ON ANY PLATFORM THAT IS USED TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET."

I'm not that familiar with the BF games, but isn't the appeal of it to play on-line with other people (ie, CONNECT TO THE INTERNET???)

ah well, I'm not against having in-game ads, as long as it doesn't hijack the game to display an ad, I have the choice to ignore them. But then if they do start implementing these ads, I'd really expect to see a drop in price or something like that. What do they do with the extra revenues from ads?????

Why not? The gaming industry doesn't have to go this direction, we don't have to be ok with it. They're going to keep pushing the line as far as they can, and every time we're complacent and say, "oh, I guess it's not so bad," they push it a little further. Where can they push it?

Ads on your character. Think it's a stretch? What if you're in an online game and you need to buy armor. You can either buy the usual +50 armor for 2000 credits, or you can buy the new "Mc" class armor, also +50, for 100 credits. The only catch is that it has a McDonalds double arch on the back and on the shoulders. "It's just the logo, it's not that intrusive." "It's not like you're not being forced to buy the McArmor"

How about an unskippable 20 second commercial each time you boot up a game? Think it's a stretch? Five years ago if you went to a movie you'd get a soundless slideshow of ads before the trailers. Now we get several minutes of TV commercials, and not only does the audience quiet down to watch them, incredibly some people actually SHUSH people that are talking over the commercials.

With micropayments and in-game ads, companies like EA are heating up the water slowly by slowly, and if we don't have the forethought to jump out early it's going to be boiling and there won't be anything we can do about it.

It doesn't read anything on your PC. Both EA and IGA have clarified this. The 1UP Podcast lied.

I haven't listened to the podcast, but did they really lie? As I understand it all they did was read the insert included in the game and then speculate on what this could mean for the future. Yeah, EA and IGA came out and clarified things which made it not as bad, but it was EA's verbage on the enclosed card that made it so alarming. It's like the whole privacy/credit card thing with EA and Live- yeah it turned out to not be as big of a deal, but it was EA's own fault for their initial wording on the privacy statement.

Mattc0m - do you seriously believe for one moment that EA will use the ad revenue to give more content to the players (for free)? Or to patch their (more than likely) buggy product?

I sure as hell don't.

No, I don't, which is why I'm pissed off - because EA claims the ads for FOR extending the game support. Like I said I'll withhold my judgement until they actually don't give it post-release support... but my expectations are low.

Well, I never said that I'd like to see all games come with in-game ads. I'd prefer to see games NOT have this game ad thing incorporated. I'm not against it as it doesn't appear to the that intrusive to the actual gameplaying (ie, it doesn't pull you out of the game to show you an ad), and it doesn't force you to look at the ad. And there is the potential for hilarious ads that it comes up with.

I guess as long as they do it where it is incoporated into the game world and makes sense in the context of the game (I'm thinking the next thing we'll see are 'Coke' or 'Pepsi' brand coda cans instead of generic ones, or crates with the 'UPS' logo or whatever), then whatever.

I guess I'm just used to having a dial up connection so I never play multiplayer and allow my games access to the internet, and thus, never had to worry about it.

Again, if I get a deal out of it (ie, cheaper price), then it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe have two editions (one edition with ads - therefore lower in price, or one without ads - but costs higher in price)